is a Japanese

automotive engineer Automotive engineering, along with aerospace engineering and naval architecture, is a branch of vehicle engineering, incorporating elements of mechanical, electrical, electronic, software, and safety engineering as applied to the design, manufact ...

who was responsible for the design and construction of the first

Lexus LS The is a series of full-size luxury sedans that have served as the flagship model of Lexus, the luxury division of Toyota, since 1989. For the first four generations, all LS models featured V8 engines and were predominantly rear-wheel-drive ...

. Born in 1937, he joined

Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on August 28, 1937. Toyota is the List of manuf ...

shortly after graduating from

Nagoya University , abbreviated to or NU, is a Japanese national research university located in Chikusa-ku, Nagoya. It was established in 1939 as the last of the nine Imperial Universities in the then Empire of Japan, and is now a Designated National Universit ...

with a degree in engineering.Dawson, Chester (2004).''Lexus: The Relentless Pursuit'', pp. 57-61. John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd., Singapore. . By the time he was placed in charge of the

Lexus is the luxury vehicle division of the Japanese automaker Toyota, Toyota Motor Corporation. The Lexus brand is marketed in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide and is Japan's largest-selling make of premium cars. It has ranked amon ...

development effort, otherwise known as the F1 project, Suzuki had amassed 25 years of experience at the firm in multiple areas of vehicle development. Suzuki's brainchild, the LS 400, launched in 1989, laying the groundwork for the successful debut of the Lexus

marque A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...

Early life

Suzuki was born in Tokyo in 1937. Before 1941, his family had moved to the town of

Tsushima, Aichi is a city located in Aichi Prefecture in the Chūbu region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 61,647 in 26,559 households, and a population density of 2,457 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Geography Tsushima ...

, outside

Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region of Japan. It is the list of cities in Japan, fourth-most populous city in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020, and the principal city of the Chūkyō metropolitan area, which is the List of ...

, where his father took a job at the Nisshin Flour Milling Company. In school, Suzuki proved to be a

gifted student Gifted education (also known as gifted and talented education (GATE), talented and gifted programs (TAG), or G&T education) is a type of education used for children who have been identified as gifted or talented. The main approaches to gifted e ...

, finding schoolwork easy, particularly in the field of mathematics. As he grew older, he developed a disinterest in school lessons, leading to a pattern of

truancy Truancy is any intentional, unjustified, unauthorized, or illegal absence from compulsory education. It is a deliberate absence by a student's own free will and usually does not refer to legitimate excused absences, such as ones related to medic ...

. Unknown to Suzuki until his high school reunion years later, his mother persuaded a teacher to excuse his absences, allowing him to graduate and enroll in Nagoya University.

Career

Following graduation, Suzuki applied for a job at Toyota Motor Corporation, which had its headquarters in Nagoya. Suzuki was initially assigned to vehicle body assembly despite a professed interested in engines. Over the years, Suzuki was mentored by senior department members, and worked with teams from numerous company departments. In 1983, company chairman

Eiji Toyoda was a Japanese industrialist. He was largely responsible for bringing Toyota Motor Corporation to profitability and worldwide prominence during his tenure as president and later, as chairman. He was succeeded as the president of Toyota by Sho ...

initiated the F1 project, a plan to create a brand-new luxury sedan which would challenge the top models from

Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to simply as Mercedes and occasionally as Benz, is a German automotive brand that was founded in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a subsidiary of the Mercedes-Benz Group, established in 2019) is based in Stuttgart, ...

and

BMW Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, trading as BMW Group (commonly abbreviated to BMW (), sometimes anglicised as Bavarian Motor Works), is a German multinational manufacturer of vehicles and motorcycles headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Th ...

. Engineers Ichirō Suzuki and Shoji Jimbo were initially selected to head the development effort in 1984. Lexus LS 400 UCF10 I

In 1985, Suzuki sent a team of engineers to

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

and

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

to determine the expectations of luxury consumers. His team developed a set of key criteria that their new sedan had to achieve in order to be successful in the luxury market. Suzuki also developed a series of "no-compromise goals", which were seemingly contradictory or mutually exclusive design targets (e.g. high top speed yet low

fuel consumption A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chemical energy but ...

). These goals became known as " Lexus Musts" which have since been used as

benchmark Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Experimental benchmarking, the act of defining a ...

standards for vehicle development within Lexus. As chief engineer, Suzuki ensured that the completed LS 400 sedan met each of the design criteria, intended to exceed rival vehicles in key aspects. The 1989 launch of Suzuki's biggest project, the Lexus LS, proved to be a major success, with the sedan outselling rival flagship models within its first year on the market. With this achievement, Suzuki gained legendary status within the company as the "

Michael Jordan Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963), also known by his initials MJ, is an American businessman and former professional basketball player, who is currently a minority owner of the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Ass ...

of chief engineers." In 2000, Suzuki was honored with the title of ''gikan'', or executive advisory engineer, and mentored other Lexus engineers before retiring in 2003.Dawson 2004, p. 139.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Suzuki, Ichiro Japanese automotive engineers Lexus Living people 1937 births Nagoya University alumni